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La Plaza; Far From Cuba

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Premiered January 10, 1979- Officially La Plaza as a separate series title ended after season 28 (2006). It was replaced by the interview series: Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One which premiered in 2007.

Producer Raquel Ortiz anticipates that the bilingual series will serve as a plaza for the entire local Latino community. Ortiz also served as the host during the first season along with guest hosts. The program format varied from week to week, between musical specials, documentaries, in-studio debates, both locally produced and acquired. Spanish language programs were subtitled in English and English language programs were captioned in Spanish.

See January 1979 Prime Time Program Guide for cover story.
Series release date: 1/10/1979

Program Description

In 1962, as a Marxist revolution swept Cuba, rumors swirled that the state would take children from their parents and make them wards of the state. Many anxious parents used special visas to place their sons and daughters on flights to Miami and into the care of the Cuban Children's Program – a program organized by several religious organizations and funded by the U.S. Government. Dubbed "Operation Pedro Pan," the resulting transportation of 14,000 children grew into the largest child refugee program in US history. But when Soviet missiles were discovered on the island, flights between the US and Cuba were suspended—and Cuban families were stranded. What was intended to be a short separation turned into years of uncertainty and homesickness. Hundreds of children never saw their parents again. Even those that were reunited remain to this day profoundly changed by their painful separations. In this half-hour documentary, La Plaza looks at two families caught in this Cold War power struggle. Their stories, and the larger story of the Cuban Children's Program, are told through archival footage, family photos, new footage of the former camps and recreations of personal memories. Additional stories will be posted on La Plaza's Web site.